


Dragon

by CommonEvilMastermind



Series: Lavellan Solos A Dragon [1]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Post-Break Up, Reaver Lavellan - Freeform, Warrior Lavellan - Freeform, dammit Lavellan, don't fight a dragon, no really, seriously do not do this, worst therapy ever
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-04
Updated: 2016-10-04
Packaged: 2018-08-19 11:02:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8203319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CommonEvilMastermind/pseuds/CommonEvilMastermind
Summary: The best form of break-up therapy: fight a dragon.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rpglvr](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=rpglvr).



Everything goes gray.

Moving is hard. Caring is harder. She should be mad. Should be sad. Should be anything.

She is not anything right now.

Hands do necessary tasks. Pack. Tie. He took his horse. None of the food.

She would have worried. Before.

It’s dark. Sleep is – ha. She rides. She wishes she could be mad. Could be sad. Could be anything.

She isn’t.

He-

 

 

Dawn breaks. It rains. She is cold. Her horse. Tired. It, at least, deserves better. She finds the road to the fort. Follows it.

The fort. Hers, now. Her soldiers shout, call, wave. She nods, stretches on a smile. They care. She must care for them. She can’t. She is broken, numb. She did not used to be this way.

An Inquisitor should not be this way. Should not be so broken. He is only a man. Even if she loved him. Even if-

 

 

She stares out. It is not raining. It was always raining, before she came. Closed the rift under the lake. Now it is not.

That is something. She is not nothing. She stopped the rain on the lake. Crestwood is better, now.

A woman, talking. To her. A report. She listens, hears the words from far away. No rifts. No bandits. Trade settling. A dragon.

A dragon?

A dragon.

She thanks the woman. She is moving. A dragon. Dragon. Fire and heat and light and life, screaming fury, born in blood, in battle. A dragon is. Alive.

She remembers how it felt to fight a dragon.

Bull, laughing. Dorian, in the back, slinging fire, shouting, sass. Cole a soft, sliding shadow in the right place. She screamed and yelled and swung her sword, lost in the blood, in the red, in the lightning and the heat. She remembers how it felt, the brilliant, terrifying joy.

It’s easy, then. She knows what she has to do.

Potions, twelve of them, and a copy of the scout’s report on the dragon because she is many things at the moment but none of them are _stupid._ Armor, enchanted, from Dagna and Harritt – flexible, strong, not too heavy. At the weapons rack she pauses, considering a shield. But she is many things at the moment and none of them are _prudent_.

She does not take a shield. She takes a sword, one of her favorites. A two-handed great sword that crackles with magic, with corruption and with flame.

There’s a wide grin on her face. She can feel it, cheeks stretching, teeth barred. A soldier tries to stop her with a message but the blood drains from his face as she strides by. He falls silent.

She is going to fight a dragon because she is _alive._ Because she is not so weak, to be felled by gentle, broken words. Lover’s words. She is not a lover. She is not meant for moonlight and kisses and tears. She is a creature of steel and fire and dragon-screams.

She cannot be broken by a single man.

She does not take her horse, leaves it to rest in the stables. In her pack there are bandages and burn-salve. Her potions are a clinking belt at her waist, and her sword is strapped under her pack.

The day is wrong.

It should be cloudy, dreary, gray, or slick with rain and the grumbling of distant thunder. This is not a dragon-killing day. The sun is gentle, welcoming, and the autumn leaves dance with the murmuring wind. They crunch cheerfully under her heavy boots as she walks, smelling spicy and rich as they do every year, as they did when she was young and sparring with her friends in the forest.

She is not young, not anymore, and the leaves have no call to be so cheerful. Not after all that has happened. But for all her impact and status and power, she still cannot change the things that matter, like the cheerfulness of the leaves. Like the choice of the man that she loves. She wishes he-

 

 

The air smells like dragon.

It’s a smell seared into her memory, a direct line from her nose to adreneline, bypassing the brain entirely. It smells like smoke, like the earth after a storm, like the after-image of the lightning. Dragon is a sharp, acrid scent and it banishes higher thought.

Hunt.

She’s south of Three Trout Farm, a wide, brown plain stretching forward into the skeletons of trees, the ruined bones of buildings. She does not hide. The dry grass crunches under her boots as she walks, tossing her pack behind a low wall.

There’s a sound. A deep, rhythmic drumming in her ears. Wingbeats.

The dragon screams.

One thought:

This was a bad idea.

Her training saves her. Before she can blink, she’s dropped and rolled behind a ruined building, every hair of her body on end. The place where she had been standing glows faintly now, white-hot with raw lightning. She feels, more than hears, the dragon’s next breath and sprints away as her shelter is reduced to rubble.

This was a _very_ bad idea.

The Northern Hunter lands. Ground shakes. It’s huge, legs like tree trunks, stretching to the sky. Tail, thick and striped. Horns, curved around its head. She is a twig. Her sword is a toothpick.

This was an _incredibly stupid idea._

Her body does not seem to notice. Her body leaves such things behind. _Logic_. _Retreat_. A _ny whit of common sense_. It only knows _survive._

Survive.

She is the Inquisitor, she is a raider, she is the best warrior her clan has ever known and there is no place in her heart for fight or flight _._ She is fight or fight, and it’s the reason she survives the first thirty heartbeats.

They are FAST heartbeats, to be sure, but she is fast. Bull is stronger. Cassandra is tougher. She is fast. Dart behind the thing. Tail whips. Block, palm on the flat of the blade, pivot, slash. The weight of the sword is half the power.

The dragon screams.

Dragon blood burns. It is _glorious._

Pain, arching through her body. Lightning flashes, and she screams, agony and triumph.

The dragon roars.

She calls on the red.

Reaver, they taught her.

Reaver, they said.

She has always been a reaver, a cleaver, a madwoman with a sword and the red inside her soul. Mad, were the whispers, mad from the red, and she comes home from fights bloody and broken but she always comes home. She is a mad thing, on the brink, steps from shattering, searing the skin of any who dare come close.

She learned. Months, days, years, crafting a mask to shelter. Shelter herself. Shelter those around her. She trained until the red sank under the fragile barrier of her skin.

She trained, but she did not change.

She is older now, and the mask lies heavily over her features. She is glass, cool and calm, flawless. She is hard, is stone, is the running of the water down the stream and sometimes she is so far from herself it frightens her. She dreams, sometimes, that she will look down into the pool of herself and find no fire there. Only darkness. Only cold.

That day may come. It is not today.

She burns.

Sword. Sweep, slash, block, ground, sweep. Faster than thought.

Beast shrieks, rearing back. Lunge in. Pebbled, lizard skin. Weak at the joints. Thrust up, hind leg meets the body.

It leaps away, rears, whips its head like a club. She rolls, up, strike, strike. It burns.

Dragon lunges, front claw extended. Dodge. Not fast enough. Her leg. Hot blood.

The pain is only fury.

Lightning sears – heart stops, breath frozen. Too slow. The tail comes – one long, great sweep. She sees it coming, rolls, and her injured thigh buckles.

The tail hits. She goes sprawling. Hears a crack.

She has no time for broken bones.

Dragon, furious. Bleeding. Whipping, lizard-panic. Roll, lunge, overhead strike. Sword bites, inside of the dragon’s thigh. Yes.

It shrieks in pain. Wings whipping. Draws her in, under its belly. Yes. Whirling, striking, it bleeds fire, it bleeds and the blood smokes, eating through her armor.

It hops to the side, leaps into the distance, across the plain. She screams her rage, sword aloft, charges. Balls of lightning hurtle past, brush her skin.

Wild, alive, she laughs. This is a place beyond pain.

Roll, under the horns. Strike the underside of the neck. Drag her sword against the ground, bring it up to the hind leg-

The hind leg-

The hind leg is cocked as if to kick-

kick back-

talons

three gaping holes in her breastplate.

Flying. Impact.

Bubble of breath. Blood on her lips.

She stirs, muscles screaming. Something-

Something in her chest gives a horrible snap.

She has no breath to scream.

The world, the world is warping, going gray, and she can’t breathe, can’t scream, can hardly move, she is holes and blood and broken bones and the last thing she’ll hear is the dragon roaring triumph. She’s, it’s over, she’s failed and she’s dying and the mark, the anchor, the Breach, Corypheus- She’s doomed the entire world for her foolishness and her heart, her heart breaking. She’s going to die and the world-

No.

She can’t die.

She has no time to die. Not now.

Her arms. Her right is- no. Her left. It responds, weighted with lead. Feel. Sense-memory, an action done one hundred times. The potions on her belt. Shattered. Empty. No-

One left.

Lifting it to her lips is almost too much. Then the cork. She would weep, but she is too tired. Pulls it out with her teeth. Grip unsteady. The potion sloshes-

Down her throat. Swallow. And another. Magic in her veins. Swallow. Don’t waste, not a drop.

Breath, gasping. Air and potion and magic. Nothing ever so sweet.

She is not dead yet.

Her right hand would not move because it was still clutching her sword. Good hand. Excellent sword. She levers herself to her feet.

That is a mistake. The ground sways, tips. She leans backwards against the wall that caught her in her flight – a huge half-wall of ruined stone. She appreciates its solidity. It is a very nice wall.

Then the dragon sees her.

It is not a nice dragon.

Enraged by her tenacity, the thing charges towards her. It’s slower, maybe, unsteady. Still huge. Still deadly.

She debates sticking her sword out, letting the beast impale itself even as she is crushed. That seems. Inadvisable. She rolls to the side – it is more of a fall.

The whole world shakes when the dragon crashes into the stone of the ruin.

She tries to turn, fails. Gets to a knee, tries to stand. Pitches forward onto her face. The third time, she finds her feet. And the dragon-

The dragon is lying in a pile of rubble and stone.

The dragon does not get up.

She makes sure. Stumbles over. Not breathing, but heartbeat is still weak. She staggers on her feet as she hacks at the base of the neck. Opens something important. Each beat of the massive heart fountains blood, acid blood, onto her. Onto the ground.

She does not stop hacking until the heart stops pounding, a massive drum gone silent.

Then she sits down.

Everything else seems very far away.

Beat the dragon.

Didn’t die.

Great.

And she lets herself slide down into the black.

 

 

 

 

 

The black is very grumpy.

“So fucking _stupid_ , _”_ it swears, bumping. The black is very bumpy. “Who wakes up and says, ‘I wonder what I’ll do today? I guess I’ll kill a _fucking dragon_.’”

“You do, chief.”

“Not by myself!” the black snarls. “Nobody goes to kill a dragon alone, its suicide.” There’s a pause, then, “Oh, shit.”

“Great way to die,” the other voice drolls. “Not a good way to survive. She’s alive, chief. She survived.”

“Yeah,” Bull sighs. It’s Iron Bull. Iron Bull, and they’re riding bareback on his giant battle nug, and he’s wrapped his arms around her so she’s secure as if she had been strapped into a saddle. It’s Iron Bull and the Chargers and they found her, she isn’t going to die-

“Hey there,” Bull says gently as she stirs. “How ya feelin’, boss?”

Then she starts to cry.

 

**Author's Note:**

> This is straight from rpglvr, who does this with their poor Inky. I just did the thing with the words.
> 
> Now with a sequel from Solas' POV!


End file.
